Gazprom sees gas production grow 17% in 10M
GORKI. Nov 7 (Interfax) - Gazprom saw gas production increase 17.2% year-on-year in 10M 2017, Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller said during a meeting with Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
"Overall, taking into account growing demand in Russia and growing demand by our foreign consumers, we are going with year-on-year production growth of 56.4 bcm of gas. This is 17.2% more than in 2016. Without a doubt this is a significant increase," he said.
Miller backed a proposal by Medvedev to hold a meeting with regional officials regarding gasification, given the growth in gas consumption, which he said rose 6.7% year-on-year in January-October, mainly among households and key industry branches like electricity, agrichemicals and metals. "But I'd like to mention growth among households in particular," Miller said.
He said that this year, Gazprom had been carrying its gasification program out in 68 regions, that 1,700 kilometers of gas pipelines would be built and 29.5 billion rubles of funding would be made available. He said 160 boiler houses would be built, almost 76 homes would be connected to the gas mains and more than 200 settlements would start to receive gas. The average level of gasification for the country will be 68.1% by January 1.
Gazprom plans to increase funding for gasification in 2018, "although we are well aware that the speed of the gasification program depends to a very great extent on the regions, on their ability to connect consumers and build distribution networks between settlements," Miller said. "But in any event we are seeing that gasification in the country is growing robustly, and, given there is after all a tendency for program commitments to be fulfilled and for synchronization on behalf of the regions to improve by the year, I think results in 2018 will be even better than in 2017," he said.
Miller also said Gazprom had pumped 72.2 billion cubic meters of gas into underground storage facilities in Russia. "At present we are ensuring the maximum potential daily withdrawal rate of 805.3 million cubic meters of gas. This is an all-time high," he said.
Miller said Gazprom always ensured it had a gas inventory of around 100 bcm per year-on-year. "All this means we can safely say that we can be relied on to supply enough gas to consumers and in Russia and abroad in the coming autumn-winter season," he said.